"It
was touted as the comedy hit of the new season," David Brenner recalled
of Snip. Indeed, the show seemed like it couldn't miss. Brenner
was a favorite 1970s talk show guest and talked up the series frequently
in the summer of 1976, including appearances on The Hollywood Squares.
His co-star was the beautiful Lesley Ann Warren. Its creator James Komack
made hit shows for comedians such as Chico and the Man for Freddie
Prinze and Welcome Back, Kotter for Gabe Kaplan.

How
and why was this show slotted on NBC's lineup, then pulled so late that
TV Guide did not have time to remove a feature on the show in its Fall
Preview issue of Sept. 18-24, 1976? Let's start at the beginning. Brenner
working with Komack was payback for what Brenner provided the producer
a few years earlier. "I had gotten Freddie Prinze booked on The Tonight
Show, and he grabbed Freddie for Chico and the Man," Brenner
said. "Then Freddie hosted The Mike Douglas Show, and I was a
guest, and he grabbed me."

Komack
gave Brenner the role of a divorced hairdresser. "It was a takeoff of
the movie Shampoo," Brenner said. His ex-wife (Lesley Ann Warren),
daughter and aunt found themselves living with him at their home in
Cape Cod, Massachusetts, while the former husband and wife also worked
in the same beauty salon with Michael, a gay man, and Daffney, a black
woman. "I'm on the pretext of being there to help her out [at the salon],
but really to get her back," Brenner said.

The
programs were shot live before a studio audience with one unusual provision.
"We weren't allowed to use a laugh track. It was in my contract," he
said. He disliked the phony "sweetening" done with laugh tracks, and
beside, he said, they didn't need it because "It was brilliantly funny."

So what went wrong? Brenner said it was homophobia. "Before we were
to debut, NBC got cold feet because we had a gay character on the show,"
Brenner said.

Gay
groups who screened the show did not complain about Michael, but NBC
felt uneasy nevertheless because, Brenner said sarcastically, "In 1976,
there were no gay people in America." This was the closest to a last-minute
decision ever made about a network TV series at the time, as it already
was in full production when the announcement to drop it occurred.

"We
had filmed seven, five of them were edited clean, ready to be aired,
and we were working on the eighth when word came down," he said. "Everybody
was crushed." The only place the series aired was in Australia, where
Komack gave them the five completed shows which aired during one work
week. "It was the highest rated show in Australian history," Brenner
said. They asked for more, but Komack told them they had no more finished.

Yet
strangely Snip benefitted Brenner, thanks to the publicity he
had done on TV during the summer pushing the show making him an in-demand
name. "When I was on the road after that show was cancelled, my career
exploded," he said. "That's when I became a star." And NBC, seeing that
the man who they had under contract as a guest host for The Tonight
Show when Johnny Carson was on vacation was a top draw in personal
appearances, booked him even more to do the show. "When Snip
was snipped - they only care about money - I was such a draw in Johnny's
place, they kept putting me on it," he said.

Twenty-five years after Snip snapped, Brenner remained a popular
guest and touring stage comedian and is glad he pursued these outlets
in entertainment. "Snip really soured me on sitcoms," he said, not to
mention make him sensitive to prejudices which are still around among
network executives concerning minorities (one told him not too long
ago that he was "too Jewish" for one project they considered).

While
admitting that "I would jump out of my seat to get a talk show," he
said that "I really prefer live performing." For anyone who cares to
see a clip of Snip, Brenner said Komack donated the five episodes to
the Museum of Television and Radio in Beverly Hills, Calif.